NEWS FILE PHOTO The Medicine Hat Provincial Court is seen in this file photo.
Aaron Hotchen, who was convicted of several drug and gun offences in July after a lengthy trial, is appealing his 7.5-year prison sentence.
The notice of appeal was filed Dec. 17. No date has been set yet for the hearing, but it will take place at the Calgary Court of Appeal.
Much of his three-week trial was spent listening to 30 hours of phone recordings from his time in the Medicine Hat Remand Centre, where the Crown argued he was continuing to run a drug trafficking operation, with a police expert in the drug trade testifying to that effect.
Hotchen’s defence argued he was merely being boastful and that what he said in the recordings had no bearing on reality.
Hotchen was convicted of possessing methamphetamine, cocaine and fentanyl for the purposes of trafficking and possessing an illegal firearm, as well as three breaches.
He was arrested in October 2016 after police executed a search warrant on a Seven Persons acreage where he resided at the time, seizing meth, cocaine, a mixture of heroin and fentanyl, an unidentified white powder, sawed-off shotgun, ammunition and cash.
